Can someone explain to me why NJ property taxes are so high? archived

Our schools are funded by property taxes.
In a county like Essex - we have to support Newark.
Layers of local and county government!

There is no safe haven from crazy property taxes in NJ...
....unless you start your own religion or live in a church.

By comparison to other states but not necessarily a value judgement on each particular item, our higher property taxes are due to:

- Overall high cost of living in this region (comparing to midwest and south)
- More governmental units (huge number of municipalities, one town school districts, county governments, etc.) and more local control than most other states (all other states?)
- Significantly lower portion of education costs funded centrally in the state (via income and/or sales taxes rather than local property taxes)
- Lack of political will to manage public employee costs at the state level (i.e. not dealing more effectively with state level teacher and public employee unions re health benefits and other issues that hit hard on local property taxes but where local governing bodies have relatively little ability to influence)

I'm probably missing some.

i would like to know why, also. look, we all knew what the taxes were before we moved in. but as we are living here, it becomes less and less clear why we are paying through the nose when services are cut and we have to pay a la carte for things many other towns include in their property tax. as people lose their jobs, are afraid of losing their jobs, having to endure pay cuts, etc. it really makes you wonder what kind of fool you are for paying these taxes.

and we don't need any stupid "move then" comments. and telling us to vote means nothing. noone running for anything is going to help reduce our taxes, i don't care what party they are affiliated with.

also, those that say VOTE! are assuming that we DON'T vote.

i love maplewood and my house but i'm very nervous with the economic downturn, etc.

NJ has more "government" per capita than anywhere else in the nation. New Jerseyans refuse to give an inch when it comes to "home rule." Until we do, we will continue to pay hellacious amounts for government.

Obviously, that's not the only problem. School costs are well over 50% of local taxes in all NJ jurisdictions. We actually have more school districts than towns in this state. Ergo, more administrative costs. Add that to the extremely high cost-of-living, resulting in high teachers' salaries = perfect storm of costs.

What MP said.

This book explaines it all.


http://www.amazon.com/Soprano-State-Jerseys-Culture-Corruption/dp/0312368941

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that EVERY tax-paying citizen should own!!, February 19, 2008
By Andrew DeMaio (Hillsborough, NJ) - See all my reviews

The Soprano State is a book that any person that has paid so much as even one dollar in taxes MUST read. Even if you don't live in New Jersey, you should still read this book so that you can ensure that your state doesn't fall in the same liberal bottomless pit that New Jersey has. Hopefully as more people read this book, they will see what a scam the tax system is, and that the only thing that the money that is forcefully stolen from us everyday is used to do nothing but line some corrupt politician and his friends pockets in the name of being "being good for the people," or "helping people that can't help themselves."

"look, we all knew what the taxes were before we moved in."

Yes, I knew that the taxes on my house were $6,750 when I moved in, but I didn't know that they would be over $15,000 now. Millburn taxes on comparable houses are in the $7,000 range and they are lower still in Chatham--I know because I've been house-hunting since November since I don't know if I can afford to live here much longer.

Yes, property taxes are high all over but they are absolutely ridiculous here in Maplewood /SO. Even in other counties, they are much more reasonable. In Westfield, a brand new house on a bigger plot of land than my current older, smaller lot house taxes are DRAMATICALLY less. Comparison= $18k here in SO, $12k for the new house in Westfield. And Westfield schools outrank M/SO schools. Many other communities such as Millburn, Chatham, Summit also have MUCH lower taxes and similar or better school systems. So, it isn't all of NJ with the huge issues. And in NY, they manage this much better too with ( I believe) a similar amount of funding from property taxes to school systems. My parents have a near new house in Commack, NY with a full acre of land (a 2,800 sq ft house) and their taxes are $13k. My sister has a smaller house (1,400 sq ft) with 1/2 acre of land in Northport, NY and her taxes are $6k. And Commack and Northport have excellent school systems (better than M/SO).

So, what gives? Why NJ so much higher and why M/SO in particular?

Because Newark has no cognizable taxable base and its getting worse. We have relatives in Nassau and their taxes include garbage pick up. Here I fail to see what exactly our taxes provide, other than purportedly great schools.

Why don't they just make it easy when taking taxes out, let it all fall under "corruption tax", at least then we'll know they are telling the truth.

Posted By: metaphysicianNJ has more "government" per capita than anywhere else in the nation. New Jerseyans refuse to give an inch when it comes to "home rule." Until we do, we will continue to pay hellacious amounts for government.

Exactly, and just wait until they nationalize this type of thinking in the next few years. YIPPEE!!!

Has there ever been a movement for Maplewood to secede from Essex County? would Morris County have us?

Fascinating reading, everyone. Thanks. We've only been in the state a few years so this has always flummoxed me. Especially knowing it's also the most densely populated state as well. Lots of people to tax, but, I suppose, also a lot of people who DON'T pay property taxes to support with services. But I guess that also holds true for NY ...

And, meta, very interesting note about the school district: town ratio. That's enlightening.

The War on Drugs has added to the governmet costs in NJ. If possession were downgraded to a misdemeanor, the tax base would be lower.

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Certainly we could eliminate the county level of government and save a good deal of money (though some things would need to be divided between the state and localities raising those levels expenses)

But NJ does have a problem that so many of us work in NY. I pay NY a large amount of income taxes and get very little in return. My income tax payment to NJ last year was a grand sum of $320. But the Supreme Court has established that state taxes go to the state in which the money was earned and that the same income can not be taxed by more than one state unless the second state has a higher marginal tax rate (though they can tax at the marginal tax rate based upon ones entire income). So unless NJ raises its marginal tax rate for everyone to a level higher than NY (not something I would recommend) raising the income tax rate is not going to net NJ much additional money from me or the other NJ residents who work in NY. (The situation is different with Pennsylvania because there is a tax treaty between NJ and Pennsylvania). There are prople who work in NJ and live in NY but fewer so the balance still hurts NJ.

Taxes in 93' $6500.00 /09' $21600.00 No improvement in services , schools perceived as "not what they used to be" . I have never used the schools, thats just what I hear. If my pay increased that much as a % , I would not live here anymore.

Certainly we could eliminate the county level of government and save a good deal of money

The problem is the multiplicity of municipalities in the state. You cannot be serious about eliminating county government, their services would just be off-loaded to municipalities, which would make matters worse. Municipalities need to merge and their services consolidated. But no-one wants to give up their township autonomy.

Instead of just raising state income taxes, the burden could be switched from property back to income taxes. That would certainly help jurisdictions like ours, but would be opposed by those in the western and southern parts of the state, where high income earners have relatively low property taxes (because they are further from NYC, with newer infrastructure).

SO/MW struggles particularly due to a lack of commercial ratables. Perhaps we could annex Vauxhall.

Posted By: mfparkThere was a lot of talk about that on MOL when the last revaluation flared up. I seem to recall the consensus was that it is very difficult to join another county as it would require legislative approval. A few years back Millburn had a semi-serious movement to secede (can't recall if it was Morris or Union County they wanted to join), but it ran into immediate political fire.

Millburn has tried repeatedly through the years to secede. This last attempt came VERY close to actually happened. If I'm not mistake, they were looking to join Morris County. I can't blame them, Morris County doesn't have a vacuous money pit (Newark) to support, and they have PLENTY of corporate businesses to tax.

H*ll, Maplewood seceded from South Orange many years ago. Granted it was an in-county secession, but it is possible for a town to join another county.

Posted By: buzzsawOur schools are funded by property taxes.
In a county like Essex - we have to support Newark.
Layers of local and county government!

Seriously, why do other states/towns etc get mega funding for schools from the government and we get royally screwed, and why why why are we subbing Newark? I'm sure as shiit they get mega dosh from the feds so why are we screwed so badly?

Most of the big things that the counties do - the courts, jails, community colleges, roads, parks should be taken over by the state and combined with their operations in those areas. Municipalities should only pick up certain smaller things, that can be rolled into areas they already operate in.

Posted By: DEFCON Creator

Posted By: mfparkThere was a lot of talk about that on MOL when the last revaluation flared up. I seem to recall the consensus was that it is very difficult to join another county as it would require legislative approval. A few years back Millburn had a semi-serious movement to secede (can't recall if it was Morris or Union County they wanted to join), but it ran into immediate political fire.

Millburn has tried repeatedly through the years to secede. This last attempt came VERY close to actually happened. If I'm not mistake, they were looking to join Morris County. I can't blame them, Morris County doesn't have a vacuous money pit (Newark) to support, and they have PLENTY of corporate businesses to tax.

H*ll, Maplewood seceded from South Orange many years ago. Granted it was an in-county secession, but it is possible for a town to join another county.

Never really came close. The required vote in the state legislature was never going to get through. It was more symbolic than anything. Suspiciously though the relative percentage of Essex County property tax that Millburn pays went down quite a bit in the years following the effort. The formula used to allocate taxes between towns is very complex and I am sure open to manipulation.

The effort was geared to joining Morris county but in the 19th century Millburn was part of Springfield thus in Union County. Somehow when it became separate from Springfield it was put in Essex county and considered part of the "Greater Newark" area.

"Greater Newark"

Now THERE'S an oxymoron.

the one thing that no one has mentioned is the enormous disparity between how much New Jersey sends to the Federal government in taxes, and how little we get back. The last I checked, we were number 1 (or 50, depending on your view) in this regard, with the worst return on the dollar, something on the order of 53 cents per dollar, or something like that.

This comes to hundreds of billions of dollars flowing out of the state, never to return, over the last 25 years or so.

This has a h-u-u-u-g-e effect on our local taxes.

Posted By: NotFromMuskogeeAnd, meta, very interesting note about the school district: town ratio. That's enlightening.

To put a finer point on it:

NJ has 566 municipalities.
It has 616 school districts, 593 operating, 23 non-operating.

Why do we have more school districts than towns? Who the f**k knows!

Drummerboy makes an excellent point. We're supporting the rest of the fricking country, the red states being the biggest beneficiaries by far. Even the People's Republic of Alaska, which has its own multi-billion dollar oil trust fund, sucks hard at the tit of the federal government. Every tax dollar that leaves the state of NJ means that we have to have higher state taxes to operate our local operations. In 2005, NJ lost $22 billion as a result of this nonsense. That would go a long way towards closing up our state deficit, wouldn't it?


I say, we cut their allowances. That's the kind of tax revolt we need.

Posted By: metaphysicianObviously, that's not the only problem. School costs are well over 50% of local taxes in all NJ jurisdictions. We actually have more school districts than towns in this state. Ergo, more administrative costs. Add that to the extremely high cost-of-living, resulting in high teachers' salaries = perfect storm of costs.

This reality was well-known back in the '70s even, but there was no support to change the existing system of fifdoms- too profitable for lots of folks. I would think there would be none today - just re-identifying the problem ad nauseam.

When we moved here our taxes were $5K or so. Today they are at $24K. The big increase occurred after the '01 reval when they jumped $5K overnight to $17K. Since then, the inexorable annual increases have us most likely going over $24K with the next budget. No politician I have ever heard or known seems to be able to grasp the concept that annual increases are not just something we should all have to live with. The word "accumulative" has no relevance when these folks calculate what the traffic will bear.

When people protest about taxes as they did yesterday, there are so many others who reinterpret the actions as evil and not reflective of the anger over confiscatory taxation.

The problem facing Maplewood taxpayers today is compounded by the ridiculous inflating of home values following the Midtown Direct onslaught of people fleeing Brooklyn and NYC who outbid each other for a seat on the train. Now those prices are falling dramatically - but not our taxes!

Posted By: metaphysicianWe're supporting the rest of the fricking country, the red states being the biggest beneficiaries by far.

Ummmm, last I checked, two of the biggest "suckers of the teat" were Michigan and California. If you are talking states, add in population as well, I don't think somewhere like Wyoming costs as much as supporting California. Also, wherever there is a large population density (large cities), those are virtually all blue states (NYC, LA, Detroit, Chicago, Boston), and the large cities support a large number of "teat suckers".

Posted By: metaphysicianDrummerboy makes an excellent point. We're supporting the rest of the fricking country, the red states being the biggest beneficiaries by far. Even the People's Republic of Alaska, which has its own multi-billion dollar oil trust fund, sucks hard at the tit of the federal government. Every tax dollar that leaves the state of NJ means that we have to have higher state taxes to operate our local operations. In 2005, NJ lost $22 billion as a result of this nonsense. That would go a long way towards closing up our state deficit, wouldn't it?


I say, we cut their allowances. That's the kind of tax revolt we need.

LOL - now you get the argument about taxes that those of us who continually pay more to support others try to make.

The real question in DB's comment is why? Why do we get so little in return from the fed?

I saw something on CNBC this morning that NJ's debt had increased from 8B to over 33B in the last 15 years. That cannot help the situation.

Newark has the 2nd largest port in the world & the 7th most active airport in the world , yet we still pay for their schools . All that bread goes to a political hack dumping ground with the best paid police dept in the world. All the pounding on our roads from the trucks + noise from aircraft & pollution & we get JACK. Why did I go to college ? Should of just become a cop & married a teacher , set for life @ 50 a multi millionaire by 57. THATS were your taxes go.

You want to change it ? Register as a Republican & vote for Lonegan, sounds crazy , but I don't see anyone else changing things .